Battle video

[Lee]

Sixxkiller: Well, U.S. soldiers over in Iraq and the surrounding area (Kuwait, aircraft carriers, etc.) watch Fox News almost exclusively, they've said so themselves, and they are in a position to know what's accurate and fair reporting and what isn't.

Yeah, being able to record battles and watch them later, or parts of them, would great. Hopefully this will be doable with CM II.

[Battlefront.com]

That will be followed by file footage of Abu Gharaib and then file footage from Al Jazeera.

I remember hearing a LTC back from Iraq saying how much they loved having Al Jazeera in their area of operations. They were the best realtime intel source they had. In one instance (maybe more) they were trying to find some batch of insurgents. Turns out an Al Jazeera crew was filming them. Someone recognized the location, radioed it in, and that was the end of the crew's subject matter

Full movie recording/playback of a RealTime game may never be possible due to the amount of harddrive and other hardware activity that would be needed. For WeGo... we don't know. Still some pretty serious technical issues for us, but we do have it on our list and if we don't get it in for CM:SF we are certainly going to try (again) for CM:WW2. It is not lost on us that this is a very desireable, and cool, feature to have.

Steve

[V]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

we are certainly going to try (again) for CM:WW2. It is not lost on us that this is a very desireable, and cool, feature to have.

Steve

Tease...

[Battlefront.com]

Lee,

Sixxkiller: Well, U.S. soldiers over in Iraq and the surrounding area (Kuwait, aircraft carriers, etc.) watch Fox News almost exclusively, they've said so themselves, and they are in a position to know what's accurate and fair reporting and what isn't.

Yup, Geraldo's reporting from Afghanistan was really accurate. He was right there in the thick of the fighting, except for the 100s of miles distance between the actual shooting and where he really was. Well, at least his description of US military supply routes in the opening phases of Iraq were more accurate. The 101st was definitely in a position to know that was fair and accurate reporting!

BTW, anybody that thinks Fox is anything but a right wing agenda driven company (at all levels, not just Fox News) needs to start reading what Murdoch himself says. And he says that they are a right wing agenda driven company, so not much disputing that Also, a good documentary is "OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism". The most enlightening accounts come from senior Fox News people that were fired for trying to be "fair and balanced".

Not to say that CNN is great, or anything. I don't think advertising one's news channel as a great source for the latest car chases and celebrity follies speaks well of the overall level of content it has to offer.

End of rant

Steve

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by Lee:

Sixxkiller: Well, U.S. soldiers over in Iraq and the surrounding area (Kuwait, aircraft carriers, etc.) watch Fox News almost exclusively, they've said so themselves, and they are in a position to know what's accurate and fair reporting and what isn't.

What, you mean those out there fighting and dying, prefer to watch the programming that portrays their actions in the most positive, morally correct, successful light? Color me surprised.

If I were out there, fighting the Sand and Suicide Bombers in Iraq, I'd vastly prefer to watch news stories about how my side was kickin' ass and takin' names, and had the moral high ground, too. But just because that's what I *want* to see, doesn't make it true.

Personally, I check in on Fox News' website now and then. And Al Jazeera, And People's Daily Online, BBC news online, and whatever else I have the time to read.

I basically assume that they're all biased, in one way or another. I figure, the more spin I read, the more likely I'll be able to use comparative analysis to cancel out the bullsh*t.

But I certainly don't base my opinion of which news report is "right", on what some Grunt carrying his M4 around his personal tour of hell likes to watch when he finally gets back to a relatively safe refuge, after a 12-hour patrol, trying to keep his *ss firmly attached to his torso. . .

I am not trying to cast aspersions on the intelligence of our brave fighting men at all; just pointing out the idea that the grunts doing the actual fighting are have a good a position to see the big picture, and know which news networks are getting said big picture right, is tenuous at best. . . they have valuable first hand perspective, to be sure. But it is only through the integration of many such first-hand perspectives from ALL sides, that you can have any hope of reaching a truer undertanding of what's actually going on.

Cheers,

YD

[rudel.dietrich]

If you watch cable new than you are watching to be entertained, not informed.

Cable news by virture of being cable news has to keep people tuning it, you dont do that by actualy analyzing and reporting on topics.

You wrap the topic in an entertaining shell and then look at it from two extreme view points.

Or you show entertaining bits that are not really news (or at least important news)

The long version is all of the news servies are garbage and debating which is best is debating which one entertains you the best.

[haido]

How about replays Steve? Like where you have little txt file that can replay that game moves like their scheduled preahead instead of making a movie *avi *mov.

[haido]

One more is CM:WW2 confirmed or did it just get confirmed im confused? Or are you just teasing...

[Kineas]

Steve,

how about a deterministic engine for CMx3? It would solve this (and the pbem file size) problem.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by haido:

One more is CM:WW2 confirmed or did it just get confirmed im confused? Or are you just teasing...

It's been confirmed as a Normandy campaign a while ago.

[Battlefront.com]

You can replay WeGo turns for sure. That already works in the game now. It's replaying an entire game's worth of turns we don't think we can get working for CM:SF. We also don't think it is possible to have replay in RealTime due to hardware limitations. Writing out things to a video file format is out of the question. Technical and hardware problems are massive, so no dice there.

Yes, next major release is WWII set in Normandy. Forces will initially be US and German. Modules will fill in other stuff which is yet to be determined.

Steve

[Peter Cairns]

Steve,

Whats the problem with a save function for each turn replay, that lets players compile there own movie after the game.

Obviously it's not perfect as they can't go back once the have choosen a particular set of views, but if we can get WeGO turns to play then they should be saveable.

Peter.

[rudel.dietrich]

I dont care if it is CM:2 or CM:58

I just cant get excited to go back to Normandy for the 10 thounsandth time.

One moudle I would like to see for CM:2 is the Korean War

That subject is untapped gold and I do not think has ever been done in 3-D

It is basicly like WW2 as well so it would not be hard to port over a good chunk of exsisting work.

[Moronic Max]

We also don't think it is possible to have replay in RealTime due to hardware limitations. Writing out things to a video file format is out of the question. Technical and hardware problems are massive, so no dice there.

Really? May I ask why? Supreme Commander's got replay, Dawn of War, Warcraft III...well, really, every mainstream RTS hit has it.

Just curious as to what it is that prevents you guys from doing it (assuming the explanation isn't ridiculously long, technical, etc).

[kgsan]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

You can replay WeGo turns for sure. That already works in the game now. It's replaying an entire game's worth of turns we don't think we can get working for CM:SF.

. . . .

Steve,

Thanks for the info. Glad to hear that full battle replay is something ya'll will try to get in at some point. One thing I'm not quite clear on from your response: even for CM:Shockforce will there be individual turn replay files which we can save from we-go solo play, or will that functionality be limited to PBEM files (assuming PBEM is in) as in the original CM series?

Thanks,

kgsan

[ November 20, 2006, 06:56 AM: Message edited by: kgsan ]

[Battlefront.com]

Moronic Max,

Really? May I ask why? Supreme Commander's got replay, Dawn of War, Warcraft III...well, really, every mainstream RTS hit has it.

Mainstream games aren't doing complicated LOS calcs, ballistic calcs, AI calcs, etc. In other words, the CPU has more idle time than CMx2. The problem is that writing to the disk has to be a priority, not something done whenever the CPU gets around to it. What we're afraid of is that the game will literally have to pause while one catches up with the other. It might not be this way, it is just what Charles thinks will happen. Our problem is that we don't want to put in all of that code just to figure out it isn't going to work. At least not right now. Too many other things to do.

Steve

[Kineas]

Originally posted by Moronic Max:

Really? May I ask why? Supreme Commander's got replay, Dawn of War, Warcraft III...well, really, every mainstream RTS hit has it.

Just curious as to what it is that prevents you guys from doing it (assuming the explanation isn't ridiculously long, technical, etc).

Those games use the 'deterministic' approach. Basically only issued commands get stored and sent accross the network. The battlefield status is always kept in sync, the same command sequences yield the same results on each player's machine. This method mainly used by RTS games, FPS games keep the game state in sync incrementally, by sending state update packets. The RTS way has incredibly small network/filesize demand in exchange for a small (1 ping), always-present lag.

I don't know what mechanism the CM engine use, but it's not the deterministic one for sure, which makes the replay more difficult to develop.

[Gothmog]

The Myth series made by Bungie had a neat way of doing the replay thing which might work for CM.

Basically it only saved the math, eg where each unit was, when it hit, what damage it did. When it came to the replay it'd simply redo the math, you couldnt fastforward or rewind the movie. It'd use the game engine to reload the map and graphics, so if you didnt have the game or the 3rd party map the battle was fought on you couldnt watch the movie.

Hope that makes sense, i'm sure CM could use a similar system.

[Battlefront.com]

Gothmog, that's the *only* way to do this. The alternative amounts to video screen capture, which usually robs 10-15fps. That's way too much. Plus, since it is screen capture then there is no sense in us coding anything since there are other products out there that no doubt would do a better job than something we could practically code up.

Kineas is correct about the sorts of shortcuts "simple" games can take. It works especially well at some points in a game, not necessarily so well in others. Where things slow down, for RTS games, is when things come into view/conflict with another player. This requires a lot more info to be swapped per second of game time. I remember old games of C&C and WC2 where someone would overrun a base and you'd know without being there because everything would slow down

The main point is that RTS games are inherently less complex and involved than CM. Complexity is what takes CPU time, so the more complex the system the less CPU cycles are available for anything else. That means graphics and turn recording, to name but two things.

Steve

[Moronic Max]

See, now that makes sense. Thanks, guys.